As House Minority Whip Eric Cantor fights President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority on everything from spending to stem cells, the Democrats are racing to introduce him to voters before he can introduce himself. | John Shinkle/POLITICO

Democrats' new villain: Eric Cantor

For all the focus on the king of conservative talk, Democrats may have found a more important villain in House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, a telegenic young Republican trying to bring life to his party on Capitol Hill.

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As the Virginia Republican fights President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority on everything from spending to stem cells, the Democrats are racing to introduce him to voters before he can introduce himself.

• At last month’s White House summit on entitlement reform, Obama painted Cantor as a poster child for obstructionism. “I’m going to keep on talking to Eric Cantor,” the president said. “Someday, sooner or later, he’s going to say, ‘Boy, Obama had a good idea.’”

• In a Washington Post op-ed last week, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said Rush Limbaugh’s voice “could be heard in the words of new Republican quarterback Eric Cantor.”

• In robocalls aimed at potentially vulnerable Republicans in Michigan, Florida and California, union groups are urging voters to ask their representatives why they’re “following the ‘party of no’ and its Republican leader, Eric Cantor.”

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• In a series of TV spots, Americans United for Change identified Cantor as one of the Republican leaders who have stood with Limbaugh and opposed Obama’s stimulus plan.

A senior Democratic aide said Monday that “Cantor is well on his way to being defined. He is ‘Mr. No.’”

If that’s how voters think of Cantor, it’s not exactly an accident.

Americans United for Change spokesman Jeremy Funk said it’s important to define “new faces” who “emerge on the right.”

“Eric Cantor may be a new face, but he is representing the same old policies the right wing has been promoting and that President Bush pursued that have America in the mess we are in today,” Funk said.

“He’s a threat,” said Texas Rep. Kay Granger, a member of Cantor’s Republican whip team. “He’s smart. He’s aggressive. He’s a great strategist. All of the above.”

“He’s doing a good job,” added Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan. “Whenever you do a good job, they come after you.”

Right or wrong, some Republicans on Capitol Hill attribute the Democrats’ fixation with Cantor to White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel; in some ways, the two were mirror images of one another as they climbed their way up their respective parties’ leadership ladders.